Page 90 of Blade

Through the trees with their prickly branches, grabbing at her wool mittens. Her sleeves. The thick brush catching her boots. She didn’t stop until she got to the field, then made her way back up the access road to Avery Hall.

She took a shower, so hot her skin turned bright red. The burning felt better than what was happening inside her. Emile had betrayed her friends. She hated him. But she also needed him. Just like Dawn, but maybe worse. And the disgust this bred inside her was the very thing that led her back to his door whenever it was open.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Ana

Now

“Artis!”

I step out of the closet, and he flips on the light in Westin’s office.

“Thank God,” he says. He holds up his cell phone. “The monitoring station called—they tracked Grace here ... I’ve been looking all over.”

His eyes scan the room, then land on the open sliding panel behind me.

“Where is she?”

“There’s an exit through there,” I tell him, pointing into the closet.

He looks at me with panic in his eyes. “This isn’t good! I have to get her back to the condo within the hour, or they’ll take her in. They’ll arrest her, Ana. Christ ...”

Hands on my hips, I drop my head and let out a long exhale. I know how all of this works. We have to find Grace.

“Why did she come here?” he asks now. And I’m about to tell him everything—how Grace heard Dawn fighting with Emile the night he died. How his blood seeped through the wall to the floor in the closet. How his body was moved to the field, Grace’s skate cleaned, put back in her locker.

But there’s no time. If Artis didn’t pass Grace coming up from the rink, that means she went out the back.

“Do you have your car?” I ask.

Artis dangles the keys that are clutched in his hand.

“Meet me at the back exit—by the small rink,” I tell him. “I think that’s where she went.”

And then I leave him there, in Westin’s office, as I move into the hallway and away from the arena. I walk the corridor that leads to another passage, then down a set of stairs at the back of the stands, to the level of the ice. I look for Grace in every dark corner.

I remember walking through this corridor, windowless and damp, every step echoing. This was a way to get out of the building without passing by the mothers in the stands, the skaters in the snack bar. Dawn and Emile. I remember wanting it to swallow me up and spit me out a million miles away. Or maybe back in time before I’d felt the speed and freedom of the ice. Before it had sucked me in like an addiction and led me to this place.

I grab my phone and call Jolene. She picks up on the first ring, her voice shaking.

“Did you find her? Please tell me ...”

“She came to The Palace ...”

“Why?” she asks, alarm in her voice.

I don’t know how much to tell her. Not before I find her daughter.

“She knows something, Jo. And she’s scared. She told me, then ran away.”

“What did she tell you?”

“We’ll find her—Artis is here with the car ...”

I hear her feet pounding on the thin carpet, a door opening, like she’s getting ready to leave.

We have the same exchange as we did before. I tell her she has to stay there in case Grace returns. She makes me promise to find her daughter. And I do. Again, I promise.